Cheetahs are the fastest animals on Earth. They're capable of running 75mph in bursts up to 1600 feet, and can go from 0 to 62mph in just 3 seconds—and this stunning ultra-slow motion footage shows the animals in all their glory. You can literally see every muscle rippling as they chase a toy through the grass.

To create this incredible footage, a crew shot five sprinting cheetahs at the Cincinnati Zoo over the course of 3 days using a Phantom camera, which captured them at 1200 frames per second.

Unfortunately, cheetahs are a threatened species. Approximately 12,400 remain in the wild in Africa; only 50 to 60 critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs are thought to remain in Iran. Check out National Geographic's Cause an Uproar for more information.